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Reza Aslan
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Reza Aslan, a contributor to the Daily Beast, is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and senior fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of the bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War. Author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam |
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 The #iranelections hashtag on Twitter. The revolution may not be televised, but it is alive and well online. Although the Iranian authorities have shut down access to sites like Facebook and Twitter, industrious Iranians are still posting real-time info at an impressive rate. The best Twitter site thus far is #iranelections. Follow it if you want to know what's going on in Iran. |
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It's a hashtag, not a site.
Reza I have been watching your commentery on CNN and it gives us more to understand about Iran and the Iranian people you give it a face to look at Before the election nobody seen it coming there where clouds on the horizon but did'nt realize it was a storm until it was pouring down rain on top of us.The speech was a game changer that hit the minds of the iranian youth and women and even some elderly people the people of Iran saw lebanon vote for freedom and said maybe we have a chance to change things and the words of wisdom and discernment that come out the mouth of a president that was swept in by the youth here in america gave them something to sleep on.Will we see a mass exodus to Iraq by the iranians to escape death if it comes to that Iraq should open the border for those willing to escape the evil dictatorship there the revolution can gain strenght grow and arm it self for fight of freedom.
The people of Iran should not vote as it has no meaning. No matter who is elected, the Supreme Leader is in charge. Why have a president with no power?
I think the statement of why have a president with no power is the telling statement. I also think the United States and the United Nations need to have a one week think tank and come up with some great ideas, each committee open on go to meeting sites and figure it out. The people of the world need to be allowed to be part of the solution, and we need to find solutions, not to Iran, but to all the issues.
For us older folks, who had to live through bomb alarms and bomb shelter practices and grew up waiting to be turned to toast, or slowly radated to death I believe at that time they could kill every single human on the earth over 70 times each, that was the brag on firepower, it is time to get a grip.
Maybe Iran has a chance to look to Los Angeles where the protests have so far been multi cultural and especially with college students from major universities joining high school students and families, has been an inspiration of working together and caring about each other. I was especially touched by a young Korean student, his own country in the midst of problems within its own borders, and thought, when are humans going to stop this. For millenia we have all wandered around and killed, and conquered, and impoverished, and enslaved. Isn't it time we took our so touted superior minds and did something to change our own not working way?
Why have a president with no power.
Why have to pay politicians and others who are not getting the job done. We need a day or week of public disaster, globally, to sit down together and fix our problems. Not that we are going to get them all fixed, but we can get started when we stop fighting, or making up rules and regulations that only harm those who bother to follow the law, and seem to have no effect at all on those who do not.
Everyone seems to say they have a plan a program a rule, a regulation, but I say "ITS NOT WORKING".
Maybe, we the People of the earth just need to go out and park our cars on the roads and freeways and go call in that they are stolen and go lay on the beach, or in the park, or in our beds for a few days and when everyone realizes that we all need each other, even if just to move all those "stolen" cars, we might start to talk and get somewhere instead of ask what are you doing? and really not care, just care how many emails we have back to ask what we are doing, when we are just sitting there wondering why we are alone.
I think it is a good thing we are tweeting away, and blogging away, but maybe we need to start figuring away and make it work. If every single person said, I will not do one thing wrong ever again, and base it only on the golden rule, would I like someone to do this to me? Think how much better the world would be in one second, then what if each of us just took one tiny thing, like getting a pound dog, instead of a prestige dog, to make the world a better place for someone, or ourselves, or something, think how much even better it would be. I work with criminals, and use this as part of their long probation plea bargaining project and you know, it works.
In a piece published in response to the events of 9/11 titled Melting Away the Matrix; Modernity, Terrorism and US Professor Levine passionately articulates his perspective of a desperate need for humanity to recognize and dismantle the "Modernity Matrix".
"Today we are all stand in judgment-not just the West, but the Rest too. Arguing that globalization has tied us together inextricably has become banal, but the events of this week bring home how much it has penetrated the imagined communities of race, class and nation. Unfortunately, not just Western policies or mainstream media coverage of the slaughter of 9/11, but also much of the critical writing on these issues has left unanswered the urgent questions of how to build alternatives to the status quo of occupation and autocracy in the Middle East, US hegemony in the world at large, and the widening cycles of violence they perpetuate.
To do so we all need dig beyond the easy symbolism of "freedom," "democracy," "Zionism=racism," and other mantras and challenge a matrix of discourses-modernity, colonialism, capitalism and nationalism; what I call the "modernity matrix"-that are each based on the creation of zero-sum oppositions between (individual or collective) Selves and Others, us and them, and which together have supported a five-hundred year old world system that supports slavery in the Sudan and Mauritania and IMF bailouts, organized terrorism and "le peuple du Seattle" alike.
Like its cinematic counterpart, the modernity matrix has for hundreds of years both determined our social existence and sugar-coated the oppressive, exclusivist and segregated reality underneath the glossy propaganda of markets, democratic capitalism, development, and freedom. But unlike the movie, there is no "one" who can lead us out of our dark age; the task is our collective responsibility".
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There is much in his logic I agree with however I have a differing perspective on the nature, scope and source of the world system he recognizes. I further believe humanity is totally incapable of extricating itself from the grip of this "system" whose origins and source of power operate in various dimensions or realms, being spiritual in nature. In short humans are caught in an epoch and a universal struggle that has engulfed earth.
We have been given volition and can choose, individually or collectively, to resist this "system". Being born in this matrix was not our choice, being of it and owned by it is optional.
Fearful rulers attempt to control with Fear...
Faith is the antithesis to Fear
Faith is only as strong as the object of the faith
Truth is powerful-lies are as quicksand...
The degree of deceit illustrates depth of depravity...
Pray for Peace...
I just find it totally unconvincing to listen to someone who used to be in line to rule via a system of hereditary monarchy to lecture anyone about democracy.
Thank you.
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